


Quiet House Full of Angry People

by MissHowdoyoudo



Series: Wish It Were Me [4]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dead Klaus Hargreeves, Gen, Moving On, One Shot, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Vanya is poetic af, shrine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26005198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissHowdoyoudo/pseuds/MissHowdoyoudo
Summary: Vanya reflects on the changes the Academy has now that Klaus is gone. She can't handle it any more.Part four in Wish It Were Me. One Shot.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: Wish It Were Me [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852501
Comments: 40
Kudos: 228





	Quiet House Full of Angry People

**Author's Note:**

> Vanya time! I loved writing from her point of view. I should do it again sometime.

Nothing was the same, once Klaus died. The broken family shattered and separated, leaving Vanya cold in an empty home. Ben was gone, sent to a mental hospital because he couldn’t let go of the one person who made him smile. Vanya wished she had Klaus’s ability, if only to see her brother again and fix their family. She wanted things to go back to the way they were before, even if she was ignored.

The house was so . . .  _ quiet _ , now. Tensions between everyone grew and grew to the point of suffocation. She could no longer stand to be in the same room as any of her siblings, not without a buffer.

But their buffer was gone now. Vanya didn't realize it, but now that it was gone, she greatly missed Klaus's jokes and general joviality. His inappropriate interruptions kept everyone sane. Without him, the family was falling apart. There wasn't any laughter. There wasn't any joy.

Luther, their Number One, pressed harder, trained faster, and nearly killed himself daily trying to be the best. It wasn’t even about making their dad proud anymore; no, he couldn’t get Klaus’s broken body out of his mind, fearing that one of his other siblings was next. But because of this, he drifted away from everyone and became Reginald’s right hand man. He was basically Reginald in all but name. Not even Allison could consol him.

Allison was all false smiles and bright eyes (too bright, too glittery, too  _ wet _ ). She threw herself into acting the jester, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t  _ real _ . Allison’s jokes hurt, not because of their context, but because that was  _ Klaus’s  _ job. It was  _ Klaus _ that joked and made things bright and brought light into their hellish lives. Allison couldn’t replace him, and they all knew it. She still tried to keep the household from falling apart, but Vanya didn’t want to play happy families with her. Eventually, Allison stopped trying and put her acting to good use elsewhere.

Ben was gone, similar to Klaus but not. He was wild and dangerous, now (that’s what Father told them, and Vanya had seen the evidence on Mom and around Father’s neck--). He was locked far away where he couldn’t hurt anyone, least of all himself. Vanya would never admit it, but she was glad he was gone. He scared her now. When he wasn’t yelling at nothing or at Father, he was listless and far away already. She wanted  _ her _ Ben back, the one who smiled shyly and cried about the demons in his chest and read books late into the night. That Ben had died when Klaus did.

Diego was bitter and waspish towards everyone. He snapped when someone even touched on something Klaus related, and Ben was swiftly becoming a taboo subject for him as well. Vanya had heard him mutter about broken promises and regrets, and maybe, before this whole mess started, she would have asked him about it, would have comforted him when she could hear his sobs at night, maybe played him a piece to drown out the heavy sorrow he swallowed down with Klaus’s whiskey. Now, though . . . now the only thing she felt was numb. There was no room for anyone but herself, and she was bleeding out.

Vanya was . . . coping. At least, she thought she was. She was living in a dream-like haze, moving through the house like one of the ghosts that haunted Klaus. But she wasn’t crying every night. She wasn’t mourning Klaus anymore (she just missed him, missed his jokes and his bright,  _ right _ smile and the way he held the family together like glue--). She wasn’t doing much of anything except learning violin. She wanted to become something great. Maybe she could title her first piece  _ Nameless Haunt _ in honor of her lost (dead, dead,  _ gone _ \--) brother.

Seven shrunk down to four, first with Five going missing, Four dying a horrifying death, and lastly Six being taken away. Seven and Four. Vanya and Klaus. They were never the closest of siblings, but they loved each other fiercely. Klaus was always nice to Vanya, she knew that now. He was kind and sweet and silly and the brightest of them all. The drugs and the alcohol, she knew, were a way for him to fly away from the pain he was suffering day in and day out. He was suffering, and scared, and just a little boy that was playing dress up and trying desperately to survive. She wished she had been better for him. They all did.

He was the best of them all.

He died too soon, leaving a gaping wound in the ones left behind, dying a hero's death. And yet her, and the others, couldn’t be angry with him. Bitter, maybe, but never angry. Not at Klaus.

Instead, poisoned barbs were thrown at each other, knowing just where the chinks in their armor rested. The blame game was a strong one, especially between Diego and Luther. Hurling insults, knowing  _ just  _ what to say to bring the others down. That’s how they lived After.

After Klaus died.

After things fell apart.

After they became a house of strangers rather than a home of siblings.

Today marked the two month anniversary of Ben being locked away (of Klaus dying). Vanya was leaving. She had her meager belongings packed. Her violin was held tight to her chest as she gave one last look around her cramped room.

It wasn’t special, just like she wasn’t. There weren’t any effects, there wasn’t anything that screamed  _ Vanya _ . It was a blank room for a blank girl. She hated it. It was the most comforting thing in this house.

With a sigh, she hefted her things and left the room, never looking back at her childhood. It was time to move on, not just from Klaus and their messed up lives, but from her ordinary past and into her extraordinary future.

She hoped so, anyway.

She was leaving without a word to the others (not that they would care), no note, and stopped only once on her way out.

“Hey, Klaus,” she whispered, fiddling with her suitcase handle nervously. Before her stood a crude, and frankly terrifying, shrine that she and the others made to remember Klaus, since Father did nothing for him. A picture of him from one of the news clippings of the Umbrella Academy that Luther had was framed in the middle of unlit candles and incense burners. The thing that made it creepy was the charcoal drawings that Klaus had done while still alive, faces peering through the darkness. Some were depicting strangers or eyes. Some were the siblings themselves, and Vanya teared up at the one of her playing her violin.

“I’m leaving today,” she went on, ignoring the terrifyingly realistic eyes that stared at her from a black page. Diego said he would have loved the creepy factor, and that they should leave the drawings there. Vanya stared instead at her brother’s eyes, uncovered due to press demand. Green, kind orbs stared right back, and it almost felt like she was talking to the real Klaus.

“I signed up for the orchestra, and I got in.” For some reason, the boast didn’t feel as accomplished as it should have. “I don’t have an apartment yet. I decided to pull something you would be proud of.” She grinned and held up a wad of bills. “Stole about one thousand in cash. I couldn’t find anything else, but I signed up for a few gigs here and there to get me started. Once I have a good start, I think I’ll try teaching violin. I heard that pays well . . .”

A lump formed in her throat, but she swallowed past it and went on with what she had to say. Klaus deserved to know. “I won’t be coming back here. It’s just, this house has too many bad memories. Too many horrible things have happened. You . . . You  _ died _ , and I can’t be here for when it happens again. I can’t handle something like that again. I . . .” She took a stuttered breath. “I miss you. I miss your light. Everything is just . . . wrong without you. Klaus . . .”

She sighed and brushed away silent tears, standing up straighter and gripping tight to her suitcase. “Goodbye, Klaus.”

Quietly, she reached inside her jacket pocket and pulled out a sealed letter, the name  _ Klaus _ written in cursive on the front. She placed it gently on the shrine, right in front of Klaus’s picture. Vanya gave one last, long look at her brother’s face, then turned about and headed for the door.

It was time to move on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!


End file.
